


the wicked shall not go unpunished

by thisisthefamilybusiness



Series: all hail corvo the black, lord regent [2]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence and Gore, Coronations, Corvo the Black, Gen, Guilt, High Chaos (Dishonored), High Chaos Corvo Attano, Hints of Era-Typical Slut Shaming, Lord Regent Corvo Attano, Moral Ambiguity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-09
Updated: 2017-11-09
Packaged: 2019-01-30 12:41:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12653712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisisthefamilybusiness/pseuds/thisisthefamilybusiness
Summary: Emily sobs and presses her cheek into his broad hand. “Please, Corvo, I don’t want to be the Empress. Court hates me, don’t they all? I don’t want to be their Empress.”Something inside of Corvo aches at his daughter’s words. “They do not hate you.” He brushes her tears away as softly as he can manage.They hate me, and what I have done for you.“I swear to you, they do not hate you.”





	the wicked shall not go unpunished

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zambo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zambo/gifts).



> The title comes from the finale of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," which is also worth a listen.
> 
> Find my visual concepts for the coronation & jewelry I wrote about [here](https://www.pinterest.com/marchenribbon/dishonored-the-coronation/).

“I don’t want to.” Emily is tearful, brown eyes red-rimmed and swollen. She stands in her bedroom in her soft white nightgown, hair still unbrushed. “Please, Corvo, don’t make me.”

Corvo drops to his knees, cupping her face in his calloused palms. She looks so much like her mother, skin pale and delicate. Beautiful. “Today you become the Empress, Your Highness,” he says softly. “You have to.”

There are only five more hours until Emily must make her procession into Holger Square.

Emily sobs and presses her cheek into his broad hand. “Please, Corvo, I don’t want to be the Empress. Court hates me, don’t they all? I don’t want to be their Empress.”

Something inside of Corvo aches at his daughter’s words. “They do not hate you.” He brushes her tears away as softly as he can manage. _They hate me, and what I have done for you_. “I swear to you, they do not hate you.”

“Everyone loved my mother, didn’t they?” How can a child look so broken? “Why don’t they love me?”

Corvo remembers the smeared ink on pamphlets found nailed to the doors of the Tower, a little over ten years ago: _HER IMPERIAL MAJESTY JESSAMINE KALDWIN, QUEEN OF WHORES, EMPRESS OF BASTARDS._ Jessamine’s tears, her broken expression, so like her daughter’s: _Can’t they see that I am doing my best? Why does what I do in private matter so much?_

“They will. I will make them.” Corvo tangles a hand in her short hair and presses a kiss to her forehead. “I promise. They will love you.”

Emily sniffles, wiping at her nose as she gives a resolute nod. “Promise, Corvo?”

“Of course.” He has killed hundreds of men for her before, spilled enough blood to stain the floors of Dunwall Tower irreparably.

And he would do it again, and again, if it was what she needed.

* * *

Emily’s gown is white silk, embroidered in gold and pearl beads with the official flowers of each of the Isles. It drowns her, especially with the white fur robe draped around her shoulders.

She’s old enough now to wear the Imperial jewels, a heavy diamond collet from the Olaskir dynasty and Serkonan pearl chains draped from shoulder to shoulder. She’s chosen a little golden sparrow as her sigil, an echo of her mother’s swan, and so a sparrow made of gold is pinned to the stomacher of her gown, more of the little birds embroidered on the edge of her white gloves.

Her eyes are still red when Corvo gently places the diamond floral tiara upon her head, pinning it neatly into the curls her maids have styled into her hair. No amount of her dressing attendant’s carefully-applied powders and pigments could hide her tears.

She looks like an Empress.

When she rests her dainty gloved hand—shaking, unsteady—on Corvo’s forearm so he can escort her from her chambers and towards the start of the procession, he cannot bring himself to feel pride.

Has he protected her?

He’s slaughtered for her. Taken up magic for her. Poisoned and murdered and assassinated, all for her.

_Corvo, promise me._

“I love you,” Corvo says quietly. He feels heavy, trapped in his own black frock coat and the heft of an obsidian crown against his head.

Emily stares straight ahead, posture perfect as she descends the grand staircase from the royal residence into the reception areas.

She doesn’t respond.

* * *

The High Overseer holds the Imperial State Crown in the air for a moment, letting the jewels glitter under the dim sunlight that trickles through the leaded glass of the Abbey chapel’s windows.

Slowly, he lowers it down onto Emily’s head, behind her tiara.

“All hail Her Imperial Majesty Emily Kaldwin, Empress of the Isles,” everyone in the chapel choruses at once.

Corvo is the first to pay his homage, kneeling before Emily in the throne, kissing the back of her palm gently. “I am honored to serve under Your Majesty, Empress Emily.”

She is blinking back the tears, but her governesses have taught her well, and only the trembling of her lip betrays her. “Thank you, Lord Attano.”

It is the crowd, as grim and dour as the rainstorm outside, that must be making Emily so upset. This should be a day of joy, of happiness—if the entirety of the court truly despises Corvo, they should be rejoicing. Corvo the Black’s reign has ended, and a new one has begun.

Next comes the Duke of Serkonos, the High Judges of Tyvia, the High King of Morley, the Commandant of Wei-Ghon, archdukes and lords and peers and magistrates from every corner of the Isles. The highest military officers, the heads of the cavalry and the naval fleets.

None of them will look at Corvo, at where he looms like a shadow at his daughter’s side.

_You make yourself into a monster for her._

Do they truly hate Emily? She is a girl, barely turned ten.

No, they hate him—Corvo the Black, the man who razed dozens of cities and slit hundreds of throats. A one-man plague. A witch, so the rumors went, touched by the Outsider.

Corvo’s hands clench into fists.

They hate him, but they _fear_ her. Born half-dead, those rumors went. Raised by a Serkonan father who stunk of the Void, killed her mother in her own birth.

They fear her, _because_ of him.

Dunwall would burn to ash for her, wouldn’t it? If she asked, he would do anything. If she wanted him to kill one of these magistrates right now, he would draw his sword without hesitation.

The Mark itches where it glows on the back of his palm, concealed behind a leather wrapping.

_You would burn this entire empire to the ground, wouldn’t you, Corvo? You would do anything, if you thought it would protect her._

* * *

“How many have you killed?” Emily asks, eyeing her own reflection in the dressing room’s mirror. The new tiara—heavy diamond star brooches mounted on fine silver scrollwork with pearl decorations, a gift from some Gristolian banker trying to earn her favor—sits elegantly on her dark hair.

“Many.” Corvo will not lie to her.

“I want a number.” It’s an oddly formal tone. Corvo recognizes it as the stiff way her governess has been teaching her to speak when she addresses her magistrates. “How many people did you kill as my Regent?”

“Including military campaigns?” Corvo shifts, straightening his posture where he stands in doorway to the gold-trimmed white room.

Emily tilts her head in a variety of angles, assessing the sparkle of the gemstones. “No. Personally.”

“Around two hundred.” More, in all likelihood, but Corvo had been killing for Emily since the day she was born, when Hiram Burrows tried to imply that he might have been her father. There are a few faces that Corvo remembers particularly—the shock on Thaddeus Campbell’s expression when Corvo’s blade slid into his gut, Lady Boyle’s sharp cry, the last choking breaths of a dozen poisoned dinner guests—but the rest are a blur.

Emily doesn’t look away from her own reflection. She looks so much older than her twelve years, in a carefully-tailored black suit, face powdered and painted the same as any of the women three times her age at court—an imitation of the mother she only knew from portraits.

He has kept her sheltered, has he not? Protected her, kept her safe.

_Corvo, promise me—whatever happens, you will protect the child._

In the silence, Emily pulls off the tiara, setting it back into its black velvet box. She tugs her delicate white gloves back on, but her shoulders shake, nostrils flaring.

“I did it to save you,” Corvo says quietly. “I love you.”

Emily has not cried in front of him in a year, since the anniversary of her coronation, but now she breaks into a soft sob. Her fingers close blindly around the solid silver handle of her hairbrush, and she hurtles it into the mirror, the glass fracturing into a spiderweb of broken pieces. “I hate you.” It isn’t a scream. She does not raise her voice. She only sits at her dressing table, in front of her broken mirror, and sobs.

That makes it all the worse.

“I hate you, and I hate being Empress, and I’m tired, Corvo.”

She sounds so grown up. So much older than she should be, than she should have to be.

“I hate court and I hate this stupid palace and I hate Parliament and I hate you, Corvo.” Emily finally shrieks, slamming her hand into the tabletop. A mirror shard cuts into her fist, leaving a deep gash in her pale skin, but Corvo finds he’s frozen.

“I _hate_ you.” Emily wipes at her tears, leaving a smear of blood across her cheek. “I _hate_ you and I want you to go away.”

_Corvo, promise me._

He makes a broken noise in his throat.

Emily’s entire body shakes as she turns to face him. “But you won’t go away, will you?”

Corvo’s tongue feels clumsy in his mouth, his throat too dry. “I…” He grits his teeth together for a moment.

_She is doing her best in a world that is not kind to little girls, or Empresses._

There are things he should say: that she does not understand, that the world is cruel and people are crueler, that she just was too young to see that he’d done all of this for her.

But what could she see?

A father who burned her empire and left her entire court terrified of their Empress.

“I love you,” Corvo repeats brokenly.

“No, you don’t.” She looks so much like her mother, looks so much older, so much wiser than she should ever have had to be.

_Corvo, promise me—whatever happens, you will protect the child._

He crumbles as she turns her back to him.

He hasn’t really protected her at all, has he?  

**Author's Note:**

> Part of my 500 words/day challenge! Find my visual prompts [here on my blog](http://officialclaricestarling.tumblr.com/tagged/honorless) if you want to write along. 
> 
> I'm not 100% happy with this ending & I'm 99.9.% sure it's because this thing really, really wants to be something insanely long. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ Maybe at some future point! 
> 
> talk to me [on tumblr](http://officialclaricestarling.tumblr.com) | [deleted]


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